I have no other advice regarding that situation. I no longer even run XP to check if there could be another way, so that link does seem interesting. Even if long, it could provide a way to solve your problem.
If you check the properties of your adapter, does it show NetBios as one the active protocols?

Thanks for your interest but I did try a restore almost as soon as I the problem showed on most of the dates back to the earliest date available, getting on all occasions “Your computer cannot be restored to:” – I had used the restore facility fairly recently, so the failure was new as well. Since things have been working properly I have set a restore point and been able to use it.